Mandatory Minimums, Maximum Consequences

Abstract

Justice is supposed to be blind, impartial to an individual’s gender, status, wealth, or background. However, under mandatory minimums, justice becomes deaf as well. In a country that places such value on the pillar of justice, so much so that it is unconstitutional to inflict cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment, many people often slip between the cracks and fall victim to sentences that inaccurately represent the supposed judicial viewpoints of the United States. This idea can be seen reflected through the implementation of mandatory minimum sentencing within the criminal justice field. Despite it originally being introduced as a means of eliminating leniency and creating uniformity across sentencing by requiring fixed sentences for certain criminal offenses, over time, the effectiveness and overall fairness of this strategy have come into question. Many individuals question whether it truly serves justice or undermines it. As discourse around criminal justice reform continues to grow, mandatory minimum sentencing remains a topic of controversy, with critics holding drastically different opinions on the matter, with many honing in on their “benefits” and others focusing more on their impacts on the individual and national scale. However, despite the many existing arguments in favor of this strategy, mandatory minimum sentencing should not be practiced, as its social, economic, and judicial drawbacks outweigh its potential benefits.